Varonis survey points finger at remote storage

When it comes to cloud security, a growing number of surveys seem to identify a common concern – that one of the chief causes of security breaches and related problems for businesses are down to individual staff members using third party remote data storage systems for their own convenience.

The latest such survey comes from Varonis, a specialist in access, governance and retention solutions for human-generated data. Conducted at Microsoft TechEd events in June this year, the survey shows that nearly 30 percent of employees are using personal cloud services to store work-related documents, while 5 percent also admitted uploading confidential data to their personal cloud accounts.

The survey was aimed at uncovering how much confidential information is being leaked beyond corporate walls. One of the leading causes for data leakage is from employees who upload sensitive, work-related data to their personal cloud accounts. 

The survey found that a small percentage of employees are uploading a large number of files containing confidential work-related data.  Additionally, the survey sought to find out what measures companies are taking to deter employees from absconding with this sensitive data as they leave the company.

One of the most interesting sub-texts of the findings is the fact that a surprising number of businesses do not seem to have implemented even the most basic elements of security policy, let alone extended such policies to the recommendation of secure services or their direct provision.

“Before a company can begin to address the leakage of intellectual property, it’s important to accurately identify the source of the leaks and address the low-hanging fruit,” said David Gibson, VP of Marketing at Varonis. “We were surprised by the low awareness level of NDAs among employees. While the signing of NDAs is typically part of an employee’s onboarding process, it is often forgotten. It’s clear that employers can do more to improve employee knowledge of their confidentiality obligations. NDA awareness should be part of a comprehensive IP protection program that also includes employee training along with the implementation of proper access and security controls for sensitive, non-public data.”

The survey indicates that having an NDA in place can help reduce the number of employees who upload sensitive data to their cloud accounts without company approval to 13 percent from a current average of 18 percent.

“The data may be showing that those employees who say they signed an NDA are in organisations that have such IP programs and therefore have greater awareness of their legal risks in uploading sensitive data to the cloud,” Gibson observed.

In the survey, 44 percent of employees claim to have not signed NDAs. This is a sign that companies have significant room for improvement in communicating the value and importance of their IP to their workers.

Another way to significantly reduce IP leakage is to simply ask employees during an exit interview to return or delete any data that belongs to the organisation. However, results from the survey indicated that only 46 percent were asked to return digital content when leaving their last position.

In addition to the best practices listed by Varonis, organisations can further protect themselves against sensitive data leakage by blocking public cloud services and offering a sanctioned alternative to public cloud-based storage services that offer the same user experience while keeping data under the organisation’s control.